‘Our grievances with Bayelsa federal lawmakers’

The day of reckoning has come. It is now the turn of the downtrodden, the rich and the mighty who make up the constituencies and wards in Bayelsa State to decide the fate of their elected representatives.

The constituents have rolled out their scales to weigh the performances and achievements of persons they gave their mandates some years ago to fight for their collective interests at the National Assembly.

But the scaling results seem unsatisfactory to the power owners, the constituents whom sovereignty belongs.

Elders and leaders of the three senatorial districts that make up the state had at different separate enlarged meetings taken collective decisions that appeared to have foreclosed the possibility of the federal lawmakers to return to their seats in 2015.

Unless the decision which zoned the seats out of the reach of incumbent lawmakers are reversed, the legislators are not even fit to stand for primary elections on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in 2015. They can, however, seek to retain their positions in another political party possibly the All Progressive Congress (APC).

Already, some heavyweights who are believed to have the blessings of major power brokers in the state are rising to challenge the lawmakers. The first to indicate a senatorial interest is the Secretary, South-South Peoples Assembly (SSPA), Dr. Ayakeme Whiskey.

Whisky, who is one of the board members of the Federal Capital Development Authority (FCDA), is seeking to occupy the seat of the Bayelsa West Senatorial District at the Senate. The senatorial district is made up of Ekeremor and Sagbama local government areas.

He is up against Senator Heineken Lokpobiri, who hails from Ekeremor. While Lokpobiri represents the district in the upper legislative house; Dr. Stella Dorgu, who is from Sagbama, represents Sagbama/Ekeremor in the House of Representatives. Lokpobiri is serving his second term in the Senate while Dorgu, who replaced Governor Seriake Dickson, when the former became governor, is doing her first term.

Recently, the stakeholders in the district had zoned the senatorial seat to Sagbama and the House of Representatives position to Ekeremor. The zoning which was kicked against by the supporters of Lokpobiri has become a big threat to the third term ambition of the senator.

The supporters of Lokpobiri had argued that the decision of the PDP elders was against performance and legislative experience. According to them the state deserved to have ranking senators and Lokpobiri should be reelected in 2015 to fill the void.

Favoured by the zoning, Whisky, who spoke to the Niger Delta Report, thinks otherwise. Whisky who was also a former commissioner in the state said beyond zoning, the incumbent lawmakers have failed to give their constituencies effective representation.

He said: “As far as I am concerned, our democratic experiment is still at infancy. It has not matured to a stage where somebody will say we want ranking senator. Ranking should be a product of service to the people you represent.

“Ranking should not become an issue only when you feel that by going to the Senate two, three times, you will have the opportunity of being given highly valued House position. It should take more than that.

“If the people you represent see evidence of effective representation, they feel being carried along at every point in time, they share in a sense of belonging to the National Assembly, it should be voluntary position on their part to say our son has done well, let him go.

“To that extent, I fully subscribe to the decision of the senatorial party leadership that Sagbama Local Government, which started representation at Senate for eight years and relinquished that to Ekeremor, and Ekeremor having made eight years, the office of the Senate should now be zoned to Sagbama.

“I fully subscribe to it. Those who want to go three, four times should be a product of people’s consensus agreement and not because they want it.”

Whisky, who hails from Bolu-Orua, a community that shares boundary with the hometown of Governor Dickson’s Toru-Orua in Sagbama further identified the flaws of the incumbent federal lawmakers from the state.

He said: “I am not coming out because it is zoned to Sagbama. Even if party leadership had not come up with the decision to zone the Senate to Sagbama, I would have still indicated interest. I am one of those that believe that the people to whom sovereignty belongs have not been effectively carried along.

“Representation is beyond getting up to speak in the hallowed chambers. The democracy we practice is called representative democracy. How many times have the people of Bayelsa been involved by their representatives in defining laws, in being educated on the various bills?

“In advance democracies, I stand to be corrected, representatives are every now and then being in touch with their people. If any substantive law is in the offing to be enacted, they go back to their people.

“Now the other argument people will propose is that there is always public hearing. How many of us from Sagbama-Ekeremor have the means to go to Abuja to attend public hearing on proposed bills? I think part of the responsibility of those who aspire to represent us is to come back home to consult their people.

“For instance, the entire Niger Delta area and Bayelsa in particular, our main resource here is oil. Now a bill as sensitive as Petroleum Industry Bill was being introduced, how many people of my senatorial district and how many people of other senatorial districts were briefed by our senators and House of Rep members on the fundamentals of the PIB?

“They will say there was public hearing, but how many people have the capacity to go to Abuja for public hearing? These are the fundamentals. It is not just an issue to say that the senatorial leadership of the party had zoned the Senate to Sagbama. I as a person feel that there are fundamental flaws in representation and I would ordinarily have come up to challenge the status quo.

“Even while I was a commissioner here, we brought up a policy called bottom-up approach in budgeting. A good representative should be able to come back home in a pre-budgeting season, gather stakeholders of their constituencies and discuss issues that could be included in the budget.

“After discussing the issues and demands, you should be able to prioritise the demands and see how many of the demands you can fix in the various budgets. It is not just merely constituency projects.

“We know that constituency project is the euphemism to lining the pockets of legislators. Representatives are only interested in constituency projects and they become the contractors of the projects and line their pockets.”

On why he wanted to abandon a South-South regional leadership for the Senate, he said: “South-South Peoples Assembly is a pressure group. You can at best place the issues affecting your people before relevant authorities and agencies.

“You cannot define the solution. As the Secretary of the assembly for the past eight years, I have become very conversant with the issues that border, militate and concern the people of South-South.

“Secretary of Southsouth can only afford me the rights and privileges of making a noise and how that noise will be translated to reality can only become possible if I am in the Senate”.